Finding Triton | By : CynFinnegan Category: Gundam Wing/AC > Crossovers Views: 877 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0 |
Disclaimer: I DO NOT own Gundam Wing, Harry Potter or related characters |
Disclaimers, Ratings, Archive, Etc.: See Chapter One.
Chapter Summary: Hiiro and Trowa try to save Quatre from the ZERO System, but does he want to be saved?
Gundam Wing © Sunrise. Harry Potter © J.K. Rowling. Used without permission and not for profit.
Italics - Thoughts, emphasis.
CAPS IN BOLD ITALICS - Shouting/screaming.
:Italics between colons: - Telepathic conversation.
"Italics in quotation marks" - written messages; TV and radio transmissions, telephone conversations.
Chapter Three: The Sorrowful Battlefield
OZ's Lunar Base, June 12th, AC 195
The fourteen-year-old Gundam pilot who called himself Trowa Barton was having a lousy month.
It all began with his current mission. He had to lie about his age by nearly a year, and hack into the L3 colony's computer servers in order to falsify his pitifully thin records and just barely managed to hide his gift from almost everyone during the recruitment process. He then used those records to infiltrate the Order of the Zodiac, or OZ. His mission was to get close to and assassinate the secret order's leader, General Treize Khushrenada, and his direct subordinate, Colonel Lady Midii Une.
However, after his brief interview with the "evil succubus," as Duo called her, the stoic young man put his orders to terminate her on the back burner. The momentary contact his mind made with Lady Une's told him that hers was fractured in two between the vicious Colonel who had threatened to destroy the colonies just two months before, and the gentle, peace-loving woman seated before him.
He also found out that Duo was right to call her a succubus. Wu Fei had told him that she possessed a "Newtype" ability similar to both Quatre and Trowa's own. But where Trowa could read the minds of others like a book and communicate with the other pilots through his thoughts, and Quatre could feel the emotions of those around him, she could actually manipulate how people thought and felt, getting them to see things her way, and therefore Treize's way. That was how the Colonies allowed OZ to bring weapons into outer space.
Things started going sideways for Trowa when he overheard two OZ soldiers laughing about the death of Zayeed Winner, the father of one of his fellow Gundam pilots. The elder Winner had opposed OZ's plans to arm the L4 cluster, and in retaliation, he'd found himself blackballed and stripped of his position as a member of the Colony's ruling council, then falsely accused of hoarding resources when, in fact, he'd given them to anyone who asked.
The fact they were blaming the elder Winner not only for his own execution, but also for the injury of his eldest daughter, Dr. Iria Winner, and the disappearance of his only son worried Trowa. Quatre Raberba Winner, Pilot 04, wasn't just Trowa's friend and comrade; he had definite feelings for Gundam Sandrock's pilot that were stronger than friendship, but he wasn't sure if what he felt for Quatre was love.
Soon after, the rest of his comrades, Hiiro Yui, Zhang Wu Fei, and Duo Maxwell, each wound up captured by the new rulers of the Earth Sphere. Trowa was responsible for Hiiro's capture, and he felt like a rat for it, but he was good at playing the rat, and figured Hiiro would forgive him for it later.
Wu Fei surrendered himself and his badly damaged Gundam, Shenlong, which he affectionately called Nataku, to Chief Engineer Nikolai Tsuberov and a squad of OZ Mobile Suit troops and Mobile Dolls. The only reason they captured him instead of killing him was because he was out of ammunition, nearly out of fuel, and he didn't even try to fight back. Scuttlebutt had it that Wu Fei grinned evilly at the troops who took him into custody.
Finally, the five Gundam designers captured and Master O badly beat Duo Maxwell after he infiltrated the moon base to assassinate them, not long after Trowa destroyed Duo's Gundam, the Deathscythe, with a beam cannon on live television. It was then the braided-haired pilot found out that they used the massive shipment of Gundanium alloy OZ ordered to rebuild and upgrade both his "old buddy," the Deathscythe, and Wu Fei's beloved Nataku, the Shenlong. They would be completely repaired, upgraded, and ready to go in exactly one month.
A few days later, the moon base had received a transmission. It said that the Order of the Zodiac's newly-acquired resource satellite at 07U1, which they stole from the Winner Mining Company with the blessings of the L4 Colony's governing body, had been completely obliterated by a new type of Gundam, and that its pilot warned them that he was going to destroy Colony 06E, also in the L4 cluster, next. He had, but OZ evacuated the colony, so the only ones who lost their lives on both of those occasions were all their own troops.
Trowa figured better them than Quatre, and that the troops got exactly what they deserved.
Until that day, all three boys languished in the brig, not far from the mad scientists who built the five Gundams. He told the Mad Five about the new Gundam, and that the pilot had sent OZ Sandrock's blueprints as a message. While Doctor J, Professor G, Doktor S and Master O wanted to know what the new Gundams specs were and what sort of firepower it had, Instructor H asked about the pilot. The note of concern in the old man's voice told Trowa that he was worried about Quatre and not the Gundam.
As he walked away from their cell, he overheard the one Duo called Professor G refer to Quatre as being either extremely stupid or incredibly violent for finishing that Gundam and installing some new type of operating system on it. He started to turn around so he could tell the old man off, to let him know that Quatre was neither violent nor stupid, but a young boy grieving for his father. A man who, in life, never paid his son more than a minute's worth of attention until after he ran away from home. The man who disowned his son as punishment for becoming a soldier and Gundam pilot, but not before the young Arabian pilot disinherited himself first.
Knowing Quatre as well as he did, Trowa knew he was most likely blaming himself for his father's execution, though it wasn't his fault.
He would have done just that, if Tsuberov hadn't picked that moment to order him to take an armed escort down to the brig and collect Pilot 01, then for the both of them to suit up and report to the shuttle transport hangar for immediate takeoff. Lady Une wanted information on what sort of damage that new Gundam was capable of inflicting, and it seemed to Trowa that she didn't give a damn if he and Hiiro died trying to find out.
Could the succubus be on to me, then?
The unsettling thought had popped up again, and again there was no easy answer. If she were aware of his true agenda, he would surely be languishing in the brig with his fellow pilots or in front of a firing squad by now, wouldn't he?
***********
"Get out, Zero One!" an armed guard shouted to Hiiro as the cell door opened with a whoosh. The three young Gundam pilots all looked up to see two men armed with machine guns flanking a third, whom they recognized as their former comrade turned OZ lackey, Trowa Barton.
"C'mon, why him again?" Duo grumbled. "I'm a better pilot than Zero One is, y'know. Let me take care of the next battle."
"You can't do it in your condition," Trowa said as he entered the cell holding his former comrades. "Even a Gundam pilot runs the risk of being killed on this mission, because this time we'll be fighting against another Gundam pilot."
"What?!" was Wu Fei's shocked response.
"Apparently, this Gundam's a new model," Trowa continued, "and that one suit just wiped out an entire division of OZ soldiers."
"What are its weapons and characteristics?" Hiiro asked, standing up.
"The engineers asked me the same questions. That shows that you're familiar with them. We don't know yet. That's what we're supposed to go and find out."
"Okay, then, let's go," Hiiro said, his mind made up. "With that red one, the Mercurius, this should prove to be quite a fight."
"You're coming, whether you like it or not," Trowa said crossly, the British accent he tried to suppress slipping out.
"And you're just gonna sit back and watch as the two Gundam pilots kill each other, aren't you! Hey, Zero One, don't do it! It's probably another one of their lousy suit performance tests ... unngh!" Duo exclaimed, standing up, only to find himself doubled over Trowa's fist as it hit him in the solar plexus.
Thanks to Quatre, the chestnut-haired American pilot knew exactly how hard Trowa could hit ... and this blow wasn't even close to it ... but something told him to make it look good for the guards. It took a moment for Duo to realize that it was Trowa who "told" him that.
"Quiet, you two. You'll both get your turn soon enough," Trowa said, using the opportunity to tuck something into Duo's cassock. Moments later, he, Hiiro, and the armed guards left while Duo straightened himself up with a groaned "oww".
"I don't think that guy was acting," Wu Fei said, angered that a fellow Gundam pilot had apparently turned his coat. "We have to assume that he really has betrayed us."
"We don't need to worry about that," Duo replied with a cocky grin as he retrieved Trowa's little present from inside his shirt. "He's one guy I know we can trust."
"How can you be so sure of that?"
"Because no traitor's gonna give us a gift that so much thought's been put into. See for yourself."
What Trowa had slipped the braided-haired pilot turned out to be a microprojector loaded with detailed blueprints and schematics for the upgrades to Deathscythe, now called Deathscythe Hell, and Shenlong, now called Altlong. Duo aimed it at the wall of their cell, and Trowa's voice came on.
"Hey, that's ...!"
"Duo and Wu Fei," Trowa's disembodied voice said, "these blueprints were given to me by Master O. Use 'em to kill time. We'll be back to break you out of there soon."
"Son of a bitch," Wu Fei breathed, a faint smile creasing his astonished face.
"Right?" Duo asked in response, his own grin growing a little broader. "And G told me that they'll be ready in a month. Now that Quatre's back, we're gonna be busy again."
The faint smile dropped from the Chinese pilot's face as he answered. "I'm not gonna count on an unknown Gundam as an ally."
"Huh? But Quat's one of us ... that automatically makes him an ally!"
"Maybe, but I've got a bad feeling about this. I'll be damned surprised if someone doesn't die out there today."
***********
Sometime later, Hiiro and Trowa were in space, piloting OZ's newest Mobile Suits, the Mercurius and the Vayeate. They were searching for Quatre and the new Gundam to find out what its capabilities were. They'd been too late to save the 06E colony, but fortunately Quatre had given them enough warning to evacuate the civilians, and the latest intel said that he was targeting a colony in their current location, but no news on which one yet.
"Once we meet up with Quatre," Trowa said to Hiiro through a private channel, one used only by the Gundam pilots and the Mad Five, "we can go ahead and stage an attack on the moon base. After I hack into the system and open the cells, Duo and Wu Fei can use the confusion to board their Gundams and escape, then we can fake our deaths by blowing these suits up and head back to Earth with Quatre. From there, we'll retrieve Wing and Heavyarms. The three of us in one Gundam will be a tight fit, but I think we can manage."
Hiiro chuckled at that image. "It's a good plan, but it might be more advantageous for you to stay inside the Organization until you can get close to Treize. Then you can take him out," Hiiro finally said.
"So you knew I was undercover all along, huh?" Trowa quipped with a faint chuckle.
"Yeah. Didn't help that you had the same look on your face when you "captured" me as you did when I handed Sylvia Noventa my gun."
"And that was ...?"
"That "disapproving older brother" look you get. It takes a lot of self-control for me not to laugh at it." Both Hiiro and Trowa chuckled over that mental image for a moment, then Hiiro sobered and added, "Trowa, we should be careful. Something's not right about this."
"Hiiro," the tall, cinnamon-haired teen responded with a heavy sigh, "this is Quatre we're talking about. He's the kindest, gentlest person on Earth or the Colonies. There's no need to worry."
"Maybe, but don't forget ... he just destroyed a colony. The civilians may have been evacuated to safety, but he still destroyed it."
As he switched to a public channel, Trowa sighed again. He then ordered Hiiro to split off from the rest and search on his own. When one of the Space Leo pilots objected, Trowa reminded him that he still had the detonation switch to the Mercurius in his possession, and that Hiiro clearly saw the new Gundam as an enemy.
Within an hour of Hiiro's departure, they arrived at the colony and "Officer Barton" received a report that a three Leo scouting party ran into the new Gundam within the colony, and were completely wiped out when they confronted him. As Trowa started his back door hack into OZ's system, he ran a side search on the condition of Dr. Iria Winner, Quatre's eldest sister, and the results were good. She'd suffered from a minor concussion and some bruised ribs from their shuttle accident, but nothing more serious than that. She was currently searching for her little brother, so Trowa sent her an e-mail telling her that he'd located Quatre.
Minutes later, a small craft that looked very much like a pre-Colony fighter jet approached the search party at a high rate of speed. Though it looked a lot like Wing Gundam, Trowa knew it had to be the new one. This new Mobile Suit was very much like Wing in color scheme and appearance, especially in Bird Mode. After all, he'd piloted Wing Gundam during Hiiro's dual with Zechs Merquise in the Antarctic, so he was familiar with its lines.
"Okay, Quatre," Trowa breathed expectantly, "go ahead and show me what this new Gundam can do, and don't hold back."
Trowa watched as the new Gundam dodged beam cannon fire and machine gun shells with ease, including his own. A child could have easily dodged the blast from Trowa’s beam cannon, and he only shot at the new Gundam to keep his escort from becoming suspicious. The doubled barreled rifle split into two separate ones, and in a circular sweep, the strange Gundam wiped out every single Space Leo ... and almost shot Trowa, who managed to dodge.
"Hiiro, there's no reason to worry. This new Gundam's unparalleled," the cinnamon-haired, green-eyed teen stated with a touch of awe in his voice. "Quatre, this is Trowa. Can you hear me, Quatre?"
"Yeah, I can hear you loud and clear, Trowa," a raspy, tremulous voice came over the Vayeate's comm link. The warm, kind tone of the boy Trowa considered his best friend vanished, replaced by something he barely recognized as Quatre's voice. "Trowa ... please ... don't come any closer."
Out of concern, Trowa tried using his gift to "talk" to Quatre, but something was blocking his attempts. Wait a minute ... something's not right here ... I can't sense him at all. Could that Gundam be blocking me?
Ignoring the blond-haired boy's plea to stay away, Trowa steered the Vayeate closer to the new Gundam. Suddenly, the Gundam raised its Buster Rifle and locked it onto Trowa and the Vayeate.
"WHAT THE HELL DID I JUST SAY, TROWA?! I SAID DON'T COME ANY CLOSER TO ME!!"
Trowa barely had enough time to say "Huh?" before the Vayeate was struck by a blast from the Gundam's double-barreled Buster Rifle. He cried out in pain as a chunk of the interior fuselage sloughed off and struck his helmet nearly hard enough to crack it, making a concussion a real possibility. He watched in shock and terror as nearly a third of the Vayeate disintegrated before his astonished eyes.
Damn it ... my head's splitting, and it's not just from that blast, the emerald-eyed teen thought as he felt something warm trickling down his face. It was blood from a gash on his forehead.
"Quatre, what's going on here? Why did you attack me?" he asked, panting. For the first time in a long time, Trowa was terrified, and not only for himself. Something was wrong with Quatre, horribly wrong, and Trowa knew that the Gundam the young, blond Arabian piloted was behind it.
"Outer space has gone crazy, Trowa ... so I'm gonna use this Gundam to destroy it all," Quatre's now-raspy voice sobbed in his ears. "I have no choice but to destroy all of the weapons that have accumulated out here. OZ has the Colonies arming themselves, right? That's why I have to destroy them!"
Quatre's confused diatribe hadn't told Trowa anything. Again, the acrobatic teen asked "Quatre ... what the Hell's really going on? C'mon, talk to me, please! This isn't like you at all ...!"
"Trowa ... tell the others for me ... tell 'em to stay away from me ... or else ... I'll end up killing them."
A proximity alarm went off inside the new Gundam, alerting him to the timely arrival of Hiiro and the Mercurius.
"I'M TELLING YOU NOT TO GET ANY CLOSER!!!" Quatre screamed, drawing a bead on Hiiro with the twin barreled Buster Rifle, but Hiiro managed to shoot the weapon out of the Gundam's hand. A moment later, Hiiro ignited the Mercurius' beam saber while Quatre's Gundam drew its own from its shoulder mount and lit it up.
"IS THAT ALL YOU'VE GOTTA SAY?!?" the Prussian blue-eyed pilot screamed back. "If everything has gone crazy, then I'll have faith in myself and keep on fighting!! I don't want to, but you're giving me no choice here!! I'm gonna KILL you, Quatre!!"
For Trowa, the scene playing out before his eyes was like something out of a waking nightmare. His two best friends were about to kill each other, but with only a heavily damaged and nearly inoperable Mobile Suit to pilot, he was helpless to stop them from doing so. For some reason, the blond-haired Arabian boy's mind and soul were both in torment, as if something were forcing Quatre to do these things against his will, and his efforts to fight against it were hurting his mind even more.
With Hiiro distracting the younger pilot, Trowa tried "calling" him again.
:Quatre, can you hear me?: he asked.
:Trowa … : Quatre replied, :... It's really you, isn't it? I ... I'm not hallucinating?:
:Yeah, Quatre, it's really me. I have an idea to get you out of there, but I'm gonna need Hiiro's help. Just ... please ... keep fighting whatever's hurting you for a bit longer, okay?:
:I'll try, but it won't let me stop, and fighting it hurts ...:
:I know, but be strong and hold on, Quatre. I'll get you out of this.:
"Hiiro, keep him busy! I'm gonna try something!" Trowa said urgently. With his best friend's pain-filled mental screams echoing in his mind, the battered Heavyarms pilot managed to disconnect his seat harness and extricate himself from the damaged cockpit of the Vayeate.
"Trowa, what the Hell are you doing, trying to get yourself killed?" the Wing Gundam pilot yelled at his friend in surprise. "Quatre's lost his mind! He needs to be taken out, now!"
"Listen to me, Hiiro ... something's terribly wrong with that Gundam. Keep it occupied until I can get over there and open up the cockpit's access hatch," Trowa shouted back.
"What do you mean by "keep it occupied"? Is it that much like our Gundams?"
"Yeah, but there's something twisted about it ... it's almost evil. I don't know how, but instead of it treating Quatre like its partner, it's forcing him to do all of this, and it hurts him if he tries to fight back or stop himself. I can hear him inside of it, screaming for help ... I can't just leave him in there!"
The only thing he hadn't mentioned was that the screams he heard weren't coming from Quatre's mouth, but from his mind. Hiiro already knew that, just as the half-Japanese pilot knew all along that his British counterpart hadn't turned traitor on them. He saw it in his soul.
"Okay, pal," Hiiro finally answered with a heavy sigh as he closed his eyes briefly, then reopened them. "I'll give you five minutes to affect a rescue while I keep him from blasting your ass off. If you can't subdue him in that amount of time, I'll ditch this hunk of junk and take care of it myself."
"Five minutes. Roger that."
Performing the same maneuver Zechs had when he first arrived on Earth, Hiiro managed to immobilize the Wing Gundam look alike. While this was going on, Trowa located the pack that got him from the shuttle to the mobile suit transport and strapped himself back into it, then climbed out of what was left of the Vayeate. Using the compressed air of the pack to cover the meters between the OZ suit and the Gundam, Trowa found a handhold and started working on his rescue of Quatre.
"Come on, God damn you, let him go," Trowa muttered, slamming the side of his fist against the exterior access button. "You've been raping his mind for days, now ... haven't you done enough to him already?"
When he finally managed to open the cockpit of the new Gundam, Trowa gasped in shock and dismay at the sight that greeted him.
"Bloody Hell, Quatre ... what's happened to you?"
Quatre looked like Satan had dragged him face first through Hell ... literally.
In his new flight suit, Quatre's formerly slim and wiry body looked nearly emaciated, as if he hadn't eaten more than a mouthful of food in days. His once-vibrant turquoise blue eyes were dulled by grief, pain and madness, and the pale flesh around them was ringed by a hideous shade of grayish purple, like the younger boy hadn't slept in a week, or had gotten his nose broken in a fistfight. Overall, he reminded Trowa of a trapped wild animal, looking for a way to escape and finding none.
"GET AWAY FROM ME, TROWA!! I DON'T WANNA KILL YOU!!!" the blond-haired boy screamed at his one-time friend, tears streaming from his eyes as the British pilot suddenly found himself staring down the barrel of Quatre's pistol. In response, Trowa grabbed Quatre's right wrist and smashed it against the arm of the command chair, forcing him to drop the firearm with a cry of pain.
"Dammit, Quatre, snap out of it and stop it already!!" the taller teen growled, pressing his right thumb and middle finger to either side of the blond-haired boy's neck. With the blood flow to his brain temporarily interrupted, Quatre finally lost consciousness. Trowa then freed his friend from the Gundam's command chair, slung him over his shoulder, and carried him to where Hiiro, who had watched the entire scene and the Mercurius were waiting.
***********
An hour later, on the colony they'd saved, Trowa sat by an artificial spring with the still unconscious Quatre cradled in his arms like a child while Hiiro stood watch. As a light breeze tugged at their hair and clothes, Trowa cupped his hand and dipped it into the spring, then brought it to his lips to taste it and find out how bad the chemical treatment of the water was.
As the cool liquid washed over his tongue, he got a pleasant surprise. The clean, sweet tasting water had a slight coppery aftertaste to it. It was mineral water. This, he realized, was one of the wealthier colonies, equipped with the very best and newest in climate control devices, like variable speed wind generators, and fresh spring water probably imported from the Earth itself.
Trowa dipped his hand into the spring again, this time for Quatre. The blond-haired Arabian boy swallowed reflexively as the water passed his chapped lips, and it seemed to revive him. Opening his eyes, Quatre tried to murmur an apology as Trowa helped him to sit up, but the British pilot shushed him and told him it wasn't necessary because he'd done nothing wrong.
"Hiiro, you might want to get a drink of this water, yourself. It may be the last one we get for quite a while," Trowa said as he looked up and felt his brow crease. Trowa and Hiiro went on high alert when they heard the sound of a gun cocking. A few moments later, the trio of young mobile suit pilots saw a squad of heavily armed OZ troops approaching them, guns aimed at the boys' heads.
Vastly outnumbered, two of the three young pilots put their hands on top of their heads, and all of them surrendered without a fight.
***********
Author's Notes: Whew!! Well, I promised a longer chapter and I think I delivered the goods without rambling too much. On a personal note, I would like to thank everyone who have so far read, reviewed, subscribed to or added this story to his or her favorites. I'm very glad you like it.
And before anyone gets pissed off with me about it, all five Gundam pilots had shown instances of having both physical and psychic Newtype abilities throughout the Gundam Wing anime. I just made these abilities a bit stronger, is all. I'll delve into them further as the story progresses.
Plus, the boys do treat their Gundams as if they're living beings in the anime, including talking to them like they're friends and even giving them nicknames.
Next chapter: OZ captures Hiiro, Trowa and Quatre, and Tsuberov has a trick up his sleeve ... literally.
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